"It is the will of Allah," Tagotu replied patiently. Putting aside his offerings, he lowered the shades of his shop and composed himself for a siesta.
On the hill above the town, where the rude fort and the government buildings gravely faced the sea, the heat also made itself felt. The green blinds of the milk-white residency building, that was patterned as closely as tropical conditions would permit after the quaint architecture of rural Overysel, were tightly closed. The little cluster of residences around it, the controlleur's house and the homes of Marinus Blauwpot and Wang Fu, the leading merchants of the place, were similarly barricaded. For "Amsterdam," the fashionable residential suburb of Bulungan village, was fighting the same enemy as "Rotterdam," the town below, an enemy more terrible than Dyak blow-pipes and Dyak poisoned arrows, the Bornean sun.
Like Bogoru, the fisherman, and Tagotu, the fruit-vender, Cho Seng, Mynheer Muller's valet and cook, had seen the threat the sunrise brought. The sun's copper disc was dyeing the purple and blue waters of the bay with vermilion and magentas when he pad-padded out on the veranda of the controlleur's house. He was clad in the meticulously neat brown jeans that he wore at all times and occasions except funeral festivals, and in wicker sandals. With a single sweep of his eyes he took in the kenari-tree-lined land that ran to the gate of the stockade where a sleepy sentinel, hunched against a pert brass cannon, nodded his head drowsily. The road was tenantless. He shot another glance down the winding pathway that led by the houses of Marinus Blauwpot and Wang Fu to the town below. That also was unoccupied. Stepping off the veranda, he crossed over to an unshaded spot directly in front of the house and looked intently seaward to where a junk lay at anchor. The brown jeans against the milk-white paint of the house threw his figure in sharp relief.
Cho Seng waited until a figure showed itself on the deck of the junk. Then he shaded his eye with his arm. The Chinaman on the deck of the junk must have observed the figure of his fellow countryman on the hill, for he also shaded his eyes with his arm.
Cho Seng looked quickly to the right—to the left. There was no one stirring. The sentinel at the gate drowsed against the carriage of the saucy brass cannon. Shading his eyes once more with a quick gesture, Cho Seng walked ten paces ahead. Then he walked back five paces. Making a sharp angle he walked five paces to one side. Then he turned abruptly and faced the jungle.
The watcher on the junk gave no sign that he had seen this curious performance. But as Cho Seng scuttled back into the house, he disappeared into the bowels of the ugly hulk.
An hour passed before Cho Seng reappeared on the veranda. He cast only a casual glance at the junk and saw that it was being provisioned. After listening for a moment to the rhythmic snoring that came from the chamber above—Mynheer Muller's apartment—he turned the corner of the house and set off at a leisurely pace toward the tangle of mangroves, banyan, bamboo cane, and ferns that lay a quarter of a mile inland on the same elevation on which the settlement and stockade stood.
There was nothing in his walk to indicate that he had a definite objective. He strolled along in apparent aimlessness, as though taking a morning's constitutional. Overhead hundreds of birds created a terrific din; green and blue-billed gapers shrilled noisily; lories piped their matin lays, and the hoarse cawing of the trogons mingled discordantly with the mellow notes of the mild cuckoos. A myriad insect life buzzed and hummed around him, and scurried across his pathway. Pale white flowers of the night that lined the wall shrank modestly into their green cloisters before the bold eye of day. But Cho Seng passed them by unseeing, and unhearing. Nature had no existence for him except as it ministered unto his physical needs. Only once did he turn aside—a quick, panicky jump—and that was when a little spotted snake glided in front of him and disappeared into the underbrush.
When he was well within the shadows of the mangroves, Cho Seng suddenly brightened and began to look about him keenly. Following a faintly defined path, he walked along in a circuitous route until he came to a clearing under the shade of a huge banyan tree whose aërial roots rose over his head. After peering furtively about and seeing no one he uttered a hoarse, guttural call, the call the great bird of paradise utters to welcome the sunrise—"Wowk, wowk, wowk."
There was an immediate answer—the shrill note of the argus pheasant. It sounded from the right, near by, on the other side of a thick tangle of cane and creeper growth. Cho Seng paused in apparent disquietude at the border of the thicket, but as he hesitated, the call was repeated more urgently. Wrenching the cane apart, he stepped carefully into the underbrush.